@booksonspain
Warwickshire-based researcher, writer, linguist, genealogist & musician (longtime flugeller, budding trombonist). Current project: Spanish London: Culture, Commerce and Community in the C19 City. Also like 🐈⬛🥾📷🎺🎶 www.khgenealogy.co.uk
Sometimes all you can do is make the world 0.0000000000001% less awful by being a good person and it feels very meaningless but it’s also the only thing that really matters
Artwork resembling a standing cat facing right looking outwards with arched back created with strips of painted wood
'Cat' by Kirsty Elson who creates art by upcycling driftwood and other found materials #WomensArt
Top half of the image shows about 30 people arranged in 3 rows, wearing dark coats and festive headgear. Bottom half of the image carries the message 'Merry Christmas from Royal Spa Brass. Thank you to all our friends and supporters and to everyone who has booked us, listened to us, sung along or donated. See you in 2026!'
I made a social media Christmas card for my awesome band Royal Spa Brass. We aren't on BlueSky so I'm sharing it here 🎺🎄❄️🎅
'For humanities departments to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it. Indeed, the most useful lesson the humanities have to offer today is a profoundly countercultural one: Difficulty is good, an end in its own right.' 2/2
The Victorians loved their Spanish Christmas treats and I wrote about it for our department blog 🍷🌰🍊
Adverts showing Santa and Mrs Claus standing in front of sparkly Christmas trees. A gold banner reads Big Announcement. White text sats 'Now at 7pm on Sunday 7th December'. Top left are ITV and Bowled Over Media logos. Top right is Warwick Castle logo.
Every year my brass band plays for the awesome Carols at Warwick Castle and last year they filmed us for a documentary called 'A Warwick Castle Christmas'. It's on ITV this Sunday at 7pm. Exciting!!! 🎄 🎺 🏰
Did you know Spanish food and drink was a central part of a Victorian Christmas? And what did a wine pig (pictured) have to do with it? Read the festive blog I wrote for Warwick SMLC to learn more!
warwicklanguages.wordpress.com/2025/12/01/f...
Membership Benefits. Image: Front page of a copy of Destinations, journal of the Society for One-Place Studies. It has a photo of a chapel, and highlights some of the articles inside. • Quarterly journal Destinations • Monthly webinars by Zoom • Annual conference (online) • Member offers and discounts • Register your study / studies for free – each OPS gets a free profile page on our website • Be part of a supportive, worldwide community £10 per year; free for students under the age of 21. www.one-place-studies.org/join-us/ One-Place Studies, where family history and local history unite.
As is now traditional at this time of year, we are pleased to announce our special Black Friday offer: One year’s membership of the the Society for #OnePlaceStudies, with all of its brilliant benefits, for the same bargain price that it has been ever since we launched – just £10! #OnePlaceWednesday
Two house sparrows in profile on a garden wall. The fledgling has its beak open in anticipation...
Today's #BirdOfTheDay asks for pairs of the same #bird, so here's one of this summer's house sparrow fledglings politely awaiting lunch. (I need to clean my windows!!)
Thank you!
The background is a pale illustrated image of ancient human figures assembling a classical building. The article title is overlaid on top of this in a large rectangular pink coloured box which reads: 'Pirates, Slave Traders or Patriots? Imperial Exceptionalism, Maritime Tensions and the Emergence of the Spanish Sea Novel, c. 1830-1870' by Kirsty Hooper. The MLO logo is on the bottom right alongside the orange OA lock logo.
NEW ARTICLE: 'Pirates, Slave Traders or Patriots? Imperial Exceptionalism, Maritime Tensions and the Emergence of the Spanish Sea Novel, c. 1830-1870' by @booksonspain.bsky.social @warwick-smlc.bsky.social
Read it #OA online: bit.ly/MLO-Hooper
A grey heron stands in profile at the water's edge
I saw that today's #BirdOfTheDay is the #heron so here's the beauty I met this summer at Barston Lake in #Warwickshire. What a poser!
New article klaxon! Find out about the origins of the Spanish sea novel - a response to C19 Spain's declining global influence & attachment to the slave trade. It's been nearly ten years in the works and now you can read it on @modlangopen.bsky.social @warwick-smlc.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/3hv68ewz
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
Gorgeous writing, encouraging us to find meaning in the 'minuscule and mundane'
Badenoch: Curb students taking 'rip-off' degrees such as English The performing arts, sociology and anthropology are among the subjects the Conservatives would like to cut
So, the plan is to cut English, the arts, and sociology - the degrees that actually study culture - while on another part of your platform claiming to “defend” British culture.
It’s performance nationalism with a reading age of seven.
Photo shows extract from handwritten preamble to a probate inventory naming Jane Davis as one of three probate surveyors.
Happy Monday! After years of looking at probate inventories I have found my first female surveyor - Jane Davis was one of 3 people who valued an estate in Solihull in 1701. Not sure yet who she was - maybe a housekeeper or relative? Still, chuffed! #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #Warwickshire #Wills
I know!! I've learned so much about units of measurement, too, because OF COURSE nothing is ever simple. Today I've been looking at the 1762 update to see how things changed in my wee hamlet over the 10 years. Just fascinating!
It's so awesome and I am learning so much from it!
Photo shows the top part of a manuscript page from an 18th-century Spanish survey written in black ink, with double underlining and a squiggle in the top left corner where the clerk made sure his pen was working.
Immersed in Spain's 18th-century Catastro de Ensenada land register and chuffed to see this clerk tested his pen in the corner of the page just like I do ✒️ (this entry is for the lugar d'A Torre in Panton, Galicia)
Oh that must have been awesome!
Photo shows a curving bay surrounded by vivid green grassland and darker green hills, under a blue and white sky
Just back from a wonderful second visit to glorious #Ardnamurchan. Of all the views, this is my favourite: Camas nan Geall (Bay of Pledges). 6000 years of human history beneath all that green.
Hand-tinted postcard of a street scene; large tree to the left, lane running away in the centre, white-painted corner shop to the right, with other buildings lining the lane. Several people in Edwardian dress stand in front of the shop, one with a bicycle.
Photograph taken in 2025 of the scene from the postcard; the same tree to the L although it's winter so it has no leaves, the same lane (now a road) running away in the centre, lined with houses; the same white-painted corner shop, now with bright blue signage and paint to the ground floor. No people!
It's a month since I checked in here, but I've been busy with my #OnePlaceStudy #Genealogy and #LocalHistory. I had fun recreating this Edwardian postcard of Meeting House Lane in #BalsallCommon #Berkswell #OldnallEnd. Amazing how much remains the same 120 years later!
Tonight! If you're feeling the English winter ❄️, come and hear about the Balearic sunshine 🌞
Free next Wednesday evening (12 Feb)? Come and hear my latest 'Encountering Spain' talk about pre-WWI British travellers in Spain for Instituto Cervantes. This time we are going to the Balearic Islands! The talk is free and online and you can sign up here:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/encounteri...
Marking FINISHED* 🎉🎉🎉
* till the next batch, but I’m taking the win
👊
Thanks Joe! One day I will write something for you, I promise!!
Oh, me too!!
100%. For friends and family who aren’t Terminally Online, they only really see stuff if it breaks through on the BBC.